[AT] Tractors

[Indiana Robinson]

On Fri, Nov 6, 2015 at 5:56 AM, Stephen Offiler <soffiler at gmail.com> wrote:

> My only antique tractor right now is a '58 JD440IC (industrial crawler)
> with an 8' blade.  It runs, and the undercarriage is halfway decent, but
> one of the steering clutch/brakes is on its last legs (yeah, just one, go
> figure... ).  It's manageable, as you can plan many of your turns to use
> only the good clutch.  Last time I worked it good was this past winter,
> moving large piles of snow back to make room for more.  It wanted some
> choke even when fully warm, and it wasn't making full power.  Power jet
> adjustments didn't help at all.  Then I discovered the metal-jacketed
> ignition coil has a small hole in it, and all the oil has leaked out.  I
> think I found my power problem.  You can keep an engine running with a weak
> spark if you richen the mixture.
>
> Now that Round Tuit.  My employer just acquired a very small company, a
> former competitor, located out in Montana (we are in Rhode Island) and I
> spent 26 days in Bozeman over the past couple months training, planning,
> organizing, packing, supervising riggers and coordinating truckers and on
> and on.  Now we are moving equipment and walls and offices around in our RI
> building to make room for the new-to-us manufacturing equipment.  There are
> at least a few things, notably a 60-ton Bliss press weighing 14,000lb, that
> are older than my JD crawler.  I am getting my fill of wrenching old iron
> 12 hours a day, it just isn't tractors.
>
> And for fun, I'm renovating an old house that my wife and I purchased as an
> investment.  I will have ample opportunities to work my crawler over there
> to renovate some horse pasture land that's probably ten years fallow and
> rapidly returning to the forest.
>
> sed on SO
>
>
>


I grew up from about age 9 using first a John Deere MC crawler and a couple
of years later a John Deere 40 crawler. The MC had several serious flaws
designed into it as a result of it being base on a wheel tractor model. The
40 on the other hand was impressively improved.
Problems with the MC included a silly slow reverse and an almost equally
silly fast high gear. Another serious flaw with the MC was a much too low
lifted blade height which often made it difficult to cross ditches or could
get hung up on stumps or rocks etc.
I could be forced to have an MC crawler in my collection but with the 40
they just pretty much got it right. A real workhorse for a small crawler.
Both were much more useful back then than they would be today since these
roads were all gravel back then and you could drive them about anywhere.
Today all of the county roads are asphalt paved and they would get upset
about  such traffic.
:-)
On a side note, I grew up as a kid with the few blacktop roads here then
having frequent signs reading "Tractors with lugs prohibited"...


-- 

Francis Robinson
aka "farmer"
Central Indiana USA
robinson46176 at gmail.com